ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER BASED UNDERGROUND CABLE FAULT DISTANCE LOCATOR

The growing concern for safety and infrastructural proliferations in the densely populated urban and suburban areas as well as the quest to preserve the aesthetic values in many modern localities have necessitated the need for underground installations. The underground cabling installations are devoid of faults common to the overhead transmission lines but are associated with certain kinds of faults such as short circuit and open circuit faults. Locating the exact position of any of these kinds of faults is very exhausting, costly and time-consuming because its power distribution system is invisible. Hence, a microcontroller based underground cable fault distance locator powered by Arduino is designed to detect and pinpoint location of faults in underground cable lines. A basic ohm's law is employed to achieve the variation of current with respect to resistance that determines the position of the fault. This device has a power supply unit, cable unit, control unit, tripping unit and display unit. The power supply unit provides power to the other components. The cable unit consists of a three-phase cabling system with switches between each phase to activate faults. The control unit takes in signals from the cable unit to cause control of tripping unit and display unit. The tripping unit then detects the phase which encounters the fault and the display unit shows the fault characteristics on the LCD. The distance to the fault is displayed, alongside the phase which encounters the fault for easy clearance.